Like a Tree

Adding Like a Tree by Jean Shinoda Bolen to my "must read" list.

hat tip: Weiser Books

Spell of the Sensous

It's As If He Wants to Lose

On, Wisconsin!

Yesterday, it was sunny and warm here in Columbia's district and I raced home from work, past the beautiful Potomac and the fey-thronged Spout Run, to sit in my woodland garden and on my porch. One of my friends who's been center-front in the struggle for workers' rights in Wisconsin called me on his cell phone so I could hear the crowd around Jesse Jackson singing Amazing Grace. We had a great chat (he, on the front lines and I on my porch, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa) and then I went to my ritual room and lit incense for today's election. I'm so proud of D and S and R and J and all of my other friends in Wisconsin. I feel gifted to know them.

I had a "complicated" relationship with my dad, who, much as he wanted to be a man of words, was seldom able to articulate why he loved the things that he loved. And that made him (inexplicably, to a kid) angry. I was sitting directly behind him, in the family station wagon, when the radio announced that Dr. King had been killed advocating the rights of union workers. My dad, who spent his life in the union movement, slumped in the front seat and then yelled at me for something; I don't remember what. What I do remember was knowing that he felt an unrecoverable loss at that moment. I think he understood why it was that Dr. King could challenge almost anything except the refusal to pay Americans a living wage. One of my most treasured pictures is one of him -- a few days later, trying hard to recover himself, outside a neon-sign Memphis church -- taken when he went to cover Dr. King's funeral for his union. Whenever I'm tempted to be angry at him for the way that he raised me, I remember that picture and focus on what was great about him. He came from almost nothing and spent a lot of his life doing what he could for the highest cause he'd found. I don't think that cause was fathering a feminist, but that's (many years later, after a lot of shadow work, turned out to be kind of) ok.

So maybe it's understandable that this video, which brings together my present and my past, through the lens of my dad and my friends, makes me cry.

When I grew up and moved away from home, one of the few ways that my dad and I managed to connect was through my critiques of his writing (and his grudging support of mine). He was still editing a lot of union magazines and newsletters at that point, and I kept pushing him to make them less sexist. (Me: Dad, would this joke be funny if it were about black people? Dad: Well, no. Me: Ok, then why is it funny about women? Dad: OK, you write a better joke. Me: OK . . . .) So the irony of the sexist signs carried in this video, often above a logo that Dad designed, isn't lost on me.

To balance that, and just for my dad, who would have cried at reading it, I'll add this:

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman? ~S. Truth

Women and men need a victory tonight in Wisconsin.

hat tip/ First Draft

Tuesday Poetry Blogging

To a Skylark
~Wm. Wordsworth

Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine;
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine;
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

Listening to the Land

In the district dedicated to Columbia, the weather can turn on a dime. (OK, you have to go back to the 1800s to find Columbia on a dime and, even then, she's called by her nickname: Freedom. But you know what I mean.) Just last week, I was out in the bitter cold, covering up tender plants; today we had sunny weather and temps in the 80s. I've known it to pretty much skip Spring weather here and go directly from Winter to Summer.

Today's sun and warmth have literally been working magic on my tiny bit of Earth. Jack-in-the-pulpits that were not there yesterday evening when I took Hecate's deipnon out to the altar are now several inches high. My neighbor's deciduous magnolia is a waving magnificence of creamy pink. The tiny horns of hosta have poked through the Earth, looking for all the world like an invasion of some underground alien species.

I've known Witches who don't feel the need for a daily practice, but I find that I really need one. And a big part of my practice is communing with my bit of Earth, with Spout Run and the Potomac River, with my landbase and watershed. I need to be in touch with them to help me understand who I am. Because I am not separate from them. I am all wrapped up in the water level of the Potomac, the migrating birds hanging out on the Three Sisters as the sculling teams from Georgetown skim by. A part of who I am is the day upon which the fiddleheads (today, in the sunnier spots!) emerge from the soil and begin to gently dance open, a reverse Spiral Dance that moves within my own soul as much as it moves out in the woodland garden. I find out how trustworthy and gentle I am from the squirrels, and peanut-eating crows, and bluejays; I learn how much I truly believe in both the light and the dark when I watch the giant hawk perusing the morning doves at my feeder the way a hungry teen eyes the all-you-can-eat buffet. I need my fox to show up once in a while to re-enchant my garden. My own health is somehow bound up in the health of "my" homeless vet at the TR Bridge. And the weather that moves through Columbia's district moves through my moods and into my thoughts.

What speaks most to you in your landbase? How do you connect with it? How have you learned to listen to yourself by listening to it? If not today, when?

Invoking Air.

Video clips at Ustream
How does this change us? How does it change the eagles? How does it change the very element of Air, itself?

I know that I will never invoke it in exactly the same way, ever again.

I sent the link to G/Son via email.

Mercury may be retrograde, but this is v cool.

Sunday Ballet Blogging

Hail, Kore!

(Almost) First of the Month Bazooms Blogging

Ladies! Listen up! Detecting breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.

Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

I know that a recent study indicated that early detection via breast self exams might not be "cost effective." I'm not a scientist, but when I read those studies, they appear to be saying that sometimes women find a lump during the BSE that turns out not to be cancer. Those women have caused some expense and have gone through some discomfort in order to find out that the lump wasn't cancer. I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, as it has a few times since my first mammogram found a small, curable, cancerous lump, I go out and buy a new scarf, take myself out for a decadent lunch, call everyone I know, and declare it a good day.

Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year. If you have a deck, pick three cards and e-mail me at heca tedemet ersdat ter@ hotm ail.c om. I'll email you back your reading. If you don't have a deck, go to Lunea's tarot listed on the right-hand side in my blog links. Pick three cards from her free, on-line tarot and email me. I'll email you back your reading.